A Birth at Lower Dale Farm
“Do you believe in the Worthington Wife curse?”
Julia looked up, startled. “They told you about that?” They were riding down the lane to Lower Dale Farm. Cal looked magnificent in the saddle.
“The woman called Genevra did,” he said.
“She told me not to marry Lord Anthony because of it—she read my palm and gave me a serious warning. She was so intense that I was quite frightened,” she admitted. “In fact, I was—I was very angry with her. I thought the whole thing was a joke in poor taste. There was...quite a row over it. Anthony’s father went to see her. Her words had made Anthony rethink our engagement. The whole story of the curse is rather terrible.”
“Genevra told me that the Countess of Worthington was cursed one hundred years ago, after she ran over a gypsy child.”
Julia nodded. “That is the story. Terrible things did happen to that countess, though I suspect that was due to the lack of medical knowledge and the countess’s selfish character and not a curse. I don’t believe in curses.”
“The current countess has been through a hell of a lot of trouble,” Cal said.
She frowned. “I don’t believe the current Lady Worthington has suffered because of angry words spoken by a bereaved woman who had suffered unimaginable pain. But superstitions run deep in the country. Many tenants of the estate believe in it, especially with all of the tragedy that had befallen Lady Worthington. It has led to fear for the gypsies. Terrible, prejudicial fear.”
Some villagers had said that the curse had touched her the minute Anthony proposed to her, the moment he intended for her to be his wife...
“What’s wrong, Julia?” Cal asked gently. “You look so sad. Have I scared you?”
She could brush him off with a false smile, but she didn’t. “Some said falling in love with me was what killed Anthony. That the curse took him away from me because I was to be a Worthington Wife.”
“Who said that? Damn, that’s a cruel thing to say.”
“I knew it couldn’t be true. But it did hurt.”
“Sure it did. Tell me who said that.”
His dark brows were drawn together in anger. Outrage—over someone saying something to her that hurt. He was noble. Julia knew she could do what she’d set out to do—make him care about Worthington. But what had he meant when he’d said he couldn’t live with himself if he lived here as the earl? That was the key. If she could change his mind on that, she would win. She would save Worthington. And give it a master who was obviously worthy of it.
“Cal, it was nine years ago. You aren’t intending to be angry with people over thoughtless words after so long. But I do appreciate you acting the knight in shining armor. For me.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Julia, but if I find out who hurt you that way, I’ll make sure they regret it,” he growled.
That was Cal—he was driven by vengeance. “There is a difference between revenge and justice. And I don’t need either, Cal.”
“There’s not a lot of justice in this world, Julia. Sometimes a man has to help it along.”
He said it so coolly, and a shiver rushed down her spine.
She slowed her horse to a walk, negotiating the narrow, rough lane that led down to the large, impressive farm. It was time to change the topic of conversation. Brightly, she said, “Lower Dale Farm is the most productive on the estate—the one Anthony was exceedingly proud of, for he and the farmer, Roger Toft, decided to start raising a new and hardier breed of pig and developed better ideas for the rotation of crops.”
These had been her ideas, too, and Anthony had agreed, rather than tell her such areas were not for women. Some men would have rejected anything she’d said on principle.
Cal grinned, apparently forgetting his anger. “You’re glowing, Lady Julia. I never thought any woman would find crops and pigs sexy.”
He let the last word come out in his low, deep voice. She felt a pang of—of something intense that rushed right down to her toes.
He’d said that word to shock her. She lifted a brow at him. “Perhaps they have better sex appeal than some men.”
He gave her his cocky grin. When he did, she could see his Irish side in the roguish nature of that smile.
“I have to admit I was impressed at you chasing the Brands’ pigs,” he said. “I didn’t expect that of a duke’s daughter.”
“I am a rather unusual duke’s daughter.” She stopped. For a moment, there was silence. Muted baas of sheep. Clucking and honking from the birds. She locked gazes with Cal. “This farm is successful because this is more than the livelihood of this family—it’s their life. Mrs. Toft is expecting another child—their fifth. Why should all their hard work be destroyed?”
Cal opened his mouth to answer, but a piercing cry drowned out his words. Julia stared at the house and Cal asked, “What in hell was that?”
It came from the farmhouse—Julia’s favorite house on the Worthington estate. But now she looked at it as horror took a twisting grip on her heart. She knew what it was.
With legs trembling, Julia urged her horse to a canter. “It was a woman’s scream.”
It came again and quivers of terror shot down Julia’s spine as she neared the house. She’d heard cries like this before. Mrs. Toft was pregnant and had told Julia, last week, that she was very close to her time—
“I think a woman’s in labor,” Cal shouted as he caught up behind her.
She reined in and all but flung herself off the horse. Cal followed with a smooth flowing movement. He raced to the door with her—and Julia came to an abrupt halt.
Mary Toft—the oldest girl at age twelve—rushed out of the doorway and hugged Julia. “Me mum is poorly, they say. I’m so afraid.”
No. Oh no. “Poorly” was an adult way to hide terrible news. Julia tried to hide the shaking that threatened to overtake her. She crouched down. “I don’t know what’s happening, my dear. But I think everything will be all right. Where are your brothers and your sister?”
“They’re hiding in the kitchen. Father sent us outside, but we didn’t want to go.”
She must stay strong for the girl. She gently squeezed the child’s hand. “Let me go inside and find out what is happening, Mary.”
Her heart was in her throat. She remembered Zoe’s cries of pain...then Zoe had lost the baby. Julia’s strength was failing. Her legs wanted to collapse. But she propelled herself forward.
Cal’s hand gripped her wrist before she could go through the door. “Julia, don’t go in there.”
“I have to. I—I am needed. I must do something.”
“I’ll bring the children out. Stay out here with them.”
“No. I can’t just sit by and not help.” Pushing away from him, she ran in, but could feel him close behind her.
The cries and moans led her up the narrow wooden stairs to the largest bedroom. Julia walked into the heat and shouting and frantic activity of childbirth. Oh, heavens.
Mr. Toft was glued back against the wall, horror on his face. On the bed, Elsie Toft was half sitting, with women supporting her. Hair plastered with sweat, her face both white with shock and red with strain. She grunted and scrunched up her face, then screamed. “I can’t do it no more.”
The women eased Mrs. Toft back and she collapsed limply on the bed, her eyes shut.
“The babe is stuck. Wedged.” That was Mrs. Thomas, the local midwife, speaking quietly. A broad, strong woman with a ruddy face. Her sleeves were rolled up, her apron wet and streaked with blood.
Such agony went across Mrs. Toft’s face that Julia’s heart broke.
“What about the doctor?” she asked. “We must bring him. He would know what to do.”
“That fool with the clean sleeves? I doubt—” Turning around, the midwife stopped in midsentence. “My lady, whatever are you doing in here?”
“I’ve come to help. I could bring the doctor.”
“Aye, he should be fetched. But I fear he won’t know what to do.”
One of the other women said softly, “How long has she got?”
“Not long, the poor thing. She hasn’t got the strength anymore.”
“And the baby?”
Roger Toft let out a sob. He was a huge, broad-shouldered man with a barrel chest and enormous arms. And it was awful to watch him break. Sobs racked him.
Julia didn’t hear Mrs. Thomas’s answer. The room seemed to swim around her. It shimmered, the way the air did on a hot day.
“I will get the doctor,” she cried. She ran out of the room as if being chased by demons.
If only she had her car. She would have to ride back to Brideswell and drive from there.
But as she spun on her heel to rush to her motor, her legs buckled beneath her. A strong arm slipped around her waist and she was taken down the stairs and outside. She was deposited on an upturned bucket and she looked into concerned, sky blue eyes.
Cal.
“You almost passed out in there. I’ll get the doctor.”
“I can do it.” She had to do something. That funny feeling—that dots were exploding in front of her eyes—was going away. “How can you be so calm?”
“I’ve done this before.”
“You’ve helped a woman give birth before?”
“I helped my mother when I was a boy. Her mother had been a midwife in Ireland, and she’d learned a few things from her mother. When any woman was giving birth in the tenement, she would ask for my mam.”
His mam. The word made her want to cry. This “Mam” might lose her battle—
Standing over her, he shook his head. “You’re white as a sheet. You need a drink. Something strong, if they’ve got it.”
“I am fine. I should be useful.”
“Fainting won’t be of any use.”
“I am not going to faint. I wouldn’t allow myself to.”
“I don’t think you’ll have a choice, doll. Stay out here until I get back. Don’t go back inside. My guess is that your snooty Society wouldn’t approve of you helping at a birth.”
“I don’t care about that!”
“God, you are an amazing woman. You shouldn’t have been born a duke’s daughter. You’re a real person.”
That was the strangest thing anyone had ever said to her, yet it touched her heart like no flowery compliment had ever done. But then the worst agonized cry she’d ever heard came from the bedroom. “I must go,” she said. When he shook his head again, she cried, “You are hardly in a position to dictate to me. I am tired of being told what I can and cannot do. I am a grown woman, capable of making choices. Capable of doing what is necessary to do! I absolutely must be the one to go. You don’t know where the hospital is.”
“I’m telling you what to do to protect you.”
And she saw then, as she almost screamed with frustration, that she did not want to be protected. An English lady’s life was all about being supposedly protected, but you were really not protected at all. You still knew loss and pain, heartbreak, desperation and desolation. All you were protected from was taking some control of your life.
“Don’t. I refuse to allow anyone to protect me from life anymore.” Courage and determination surged through her. She could do this—ride like the wind to Brideswell. She was going to do it. Julia leaped to her feet.
“I’m riding with you,” Cal said. “Back to Worthington, and I’ll drive to the hospital.”
“You won’t be able to gallop as I can. You’ll fall.”
“I’ll take that risk,” he said, his jaw set.
That was exactly the kind of person she wanted to be—willing to take risk.
* * *
She led Cal out to the road, where they could let their horses gallop. It was too far for a flat-out run. Julia had to admit she was amazed at how Cal stayed in his seat.
They reached Worthington with lathered horses, both coated in perspiration and breathing hard. Cal leaped down from his horse and shouted orders that her car be brought round. Julia wanted to drive, but he jumped into the driver’s seat and refused to move, forcing her into the passenger side. Then he stomped the car’s accelerator to the floor and took off with a spray of gravel.
Over the roar of the engine, she shouted directions. She couldn’t believe Cal could drive so well on a road he barely knew. He slowed as they reached the village—just a moment before she was going to warn him to do so since there were bicycles on the road, and horses, and children.
Even though it was part of Nigel’s land holdings, Brideswell’s village hospital served much of the area, including the Worthington estate.
Inside the hospital and outside the office of Dr. Hamilton, a nurse tried to insist the doctor could not be disturbed. It was Cal who bellowed, “I am the Earl of Worthington and the doctor had better come with me right now. Now.”
She and Cal burst into the doctor’s office. The doctor dropped something very quickly into a drawer of his desk and gazed up at them calmly. “What is all this, my lady? Is there an emergency? Or is this another woman with supposed shell shock?”
Julia gritted her teeth. She remembered the irritating debate she’d had with Dr. Hamilton about Ellen Lambert. He had insisted Ellen could not have shell shock, which only afflicted men. Obviously she had hysteria—it was obvious, he’d said, because her temperament had also obviously led her to her scandalous line of work. Julia had wanted to hit him with a bedpan.
Now she cried breathlessly, “You must come at once to Lower Dale Farm. We shall drive you. Hurry—you must hurry!”
She had never thrown away her composure like this with an outsider to her family, with anyone other than Cal.
“You must tell me what is going on,” Hamilton said, unruffled. He wore a white coat, his graying hair and mustache elegantly styled with pomade.
“Oh bother! Just come with us,” she cried.
But he was not moving, so she threw the story at him. He had a bland face that was somewhat handsome, but also had ferrety attributes. He was no substitute for Dougal Campbell. Not in the least.
He still was not moving. He should leap to his feet—but he did not.
“We must go now, Dr. Hamilton,” she cried. Ladylike Lady Julia would never do what she did right then. She stalked around to his side and then she smelled the strong aroma of alcohol. Something snapped in her. “Are you drunk? Is that why you are not getting up? I will have my brother throw you out if you do not get up and come with us at once!”
He had the gall to look offended. “To Lower Dale Farm for a birth, my lady? That is the business of midwives. I’d come at once, of course, if it was a patient of mine at Brideswell. But these people prefer midwives who come from their own social stratum. They have no money to pay for a proper phys—”
“I will pay,” Julia bit off. “Do remember my family is the reason this hospital operates. It is by the generosity of the duchy that you can even sit in this office and drink brandy, Dr. Hamilton. If you do not come, you will be removed from your position.”
“And as Earl of Worthington, I will destroy your fat arse if you don’t listen to Lady Julia,” Cal growled. Then Cal made a fist and slammed it so hard on the desk she let out a gasp of shock. The force sent things flying and clattering to the floor. “Get the hell out of that chair and save a woman’s life.”
She’d never seen such rage on a man’s face. Cal’s anger wasn’t even directed at her and it made her want to whimper. Dr. Hamilton stopped arguing. He did get off his bottom and grabbed his bag. Cal put his hand on the man’s shoulder and pushed him all the way to her motorcar. Cal drove with Dr. Hamilton at his side. Against Cal’s wishes, Julia chose to perch in the rumble seat.
Cal drove back with such speed the doctor turned green.
But it was all for nothing.
Hamilton examined Mrs. Toft, used forceps to take out the baby. Drenched in sweat, Mrs. Toft could no longer cry out. She sobbed, her breathing coming in small gasps.
The poor infant girl came out and Mrs. Toft gave out a terrible scream. The midwife quickly wrapped up the child. But Julia saw a small bluish face and her stomach churned. The baby was already dead. There had been no hope for the child.
Mr. Toft held his wife’s hand. Told her it was all right. That she was not to worry. That she just had to get strong. He’d look after her. Their children would look after her.
But Mrs. Toft just simply closed her eyes, let out the softest sigh and slipped away.
Julia stood there, staring with horror and not quite believing that something so terrible could have happened. She knew what Zoe had suffered. Now this family had lost a child, and their mother, too.
Mr. Toft collapsed to his knees by the bed at his wife’s side. He held his wife’s hand. Clung to it. Julia hurried out of the bedroom and downstairs, knowing her own tears were going to come.
Then she saw them—four pale, frightened faces.
The children.
* * *
Watching Julia gather up the children to get them outside and away from their mother’s room just about broke Cal’s heart. Julia had brushed away the tears on her cheeks and she tried to herd them out briskly. But she hadn’t told them their mother was gone. To spare them, he figured. But the children were going to find out—he realized he was going to be the one to tell them. He was not going to let Julia go through such a painful thing.
She was trying to urge them out the door that led outside from a surprisingly large kitchen, but he said, “Julia, let me talk to them.”
Panic flared in Julia’s large blue eyes. She had two little girls by the hand and she was trying to make the boys go outside. “Not yet.”
“Now,” he said firmly. “They’re stronger than you think.”
“But there is nothing to be done.”
“They have to go in to see her. To say goodbye.”
“No. I want to spare them the sight of—”
“Julia, I’ve been through this,” he said softly. “When I was as young as some of them. The children need to see. They need to touch their mother. Give her a last kiss.”
Cal got down on one knee in front of the children.
“Don’t,” Julia protested.
He had to. But suddenly he couldn’t find the words. Christ, he just couldn’t say it. All he could remember was the gut-destroying pain he’d felt when Mam died. And the anger. The white-hot rage.
The children were sniffling, looking at him. They had to know, but they needed to be told. And Christ, he was failing. “Help me with this, Julia. I need your help to do this.”
She touched his shoulder. It was such a tender gesture it gave him a burst of strength. He told the children their mam was called back to heaven. That she loved them, but sometimes love was not enough—a person had to face something they weren’t strong enough to battle.
“You have to honor her always,” he said to them. “Be strong for her. Look after each other and your father. Your mother will watch you all the time from heaven. If you just think about her, it will be like having her with you.”
He told them all the things he’d been told when he lost his mother.
The two girls began to cry and Julia hugged them both to her skirts. The boys sniffled. Cal remembered how he had been told to behave like a man. To hold in tears. But he said to the boys, “People will tell you to be tough. They’ll say you have to behave like men. But I’m going to tell you to cry right now if you want to. Do it now, get it out of you. Then you’ll be ready to help your father.”
One of the boys flung his small body against Cal’s chest. Cal embraced the lad. The other bigger boy staunchly held in his tears.
“It’s not fair,” the older boy said. “It’s not fair.”
“I know, lad,” Cal said. “But even though life doesn’t seem fair, we have to survive. You have to keep fighting. You have to get up and kick life in its crotch—”
“Cal!” Julia gasped.
But that was how he’d felt about life. He remembered what had kept him going—knowing he had to care for his brother. “You’re the oldest and it’s important you look after your siblings. They’ll need you.”
“Come, we must clean your faces,” Julia said. She was using her crisp, lovely, ladylike tones and the children followed her. She herded the children into the kitchen and wiped small faces. She gave them coins for their savings, then she answered all their desperate questions as best as she could.
In that moment, Lady Julia reminded Cal of Alice. He had been deeply in love with Alice. He couldn’t show it or act on it—he couldn’t hurt his brother, David—but he’d never met another woman who compared to Nurse Alice Hayes.
Julia compared.
He saw her face. How pale she looked. She made tea as she had done before, with a big iron kettle. She poured a cup of tea for each child. Then one more. “Take this for your father. He might not want it now, but leave it close by. He should have something. I’ve put honey in to make it sweet.”
With the tallest girl carrying the cup and saucer, the children went back into the other room to see their father.
Lady Julia leaned against the sink, her head bowed. She kept her back to the doorway, then she put her hands to her face.
She was crying. And she didn’t want anyone to see.
His mother used to hide to cry, because she was so worried about where their next dollar would come from. But she always turned a bright and cheery face to him and David, no matter how scared, how hungry, how desperate she felt.
Cal used to wake up and hear her sobs, after his father’s death. She would cross herself and touch the one picture she had of Cal’s father.
Cal had been too young and too powerless to help his mother. He’d tried—he’d been young but the Five Points Gang had offered a way to make money. A lot of money...
Now he was an adult. An earl. A rich man. He could do anything he wanted.
Including soothe Lady Julia.
He wrapped his arms around her. Her dress was a summer dress, thin and soft. He drew her tight to his chest. She tried to push away, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Cry against me,” he said.
And she did.
She sobbed and sobbed. Then her crying began to ease. She looked up at him, her lips almost touching his chin.
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. A nice girl. He didn’t know a lot of girls who were truly high-class. But Julia was.
Next thing he knew, he’d bent his head and his mouth touched hers.
“No,” she whispered against his lips. “We shouldn’t. That family has lost their mother. That tiny baby never had a chance to live. It will never be right...never. If only I could have helped them.”
“You did everything you could, Julia. I’ll help them. Don’t cry and don’t worry—the family will be cared for.”
Her tongue swept over her lips, and his knees just about buckled. “You will do that?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
He lifted her onto her toes to kiss her hard. To kiss her with his heart so full of longing and need he thought it was going to burst. He couldn’t stop remembering his mother’s death. How cold and empty he’d felt. He was kissing Julia, struggling to feel warm again.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, holding him tight. She broke away from the kiss. “You are truly an earl,” she said, before pushing her lips against his again and kissing him back.
Cal felt a surge of heat like he’d never known.
Not sexual heat. Something deeper. Something more. Something that made him warm right through to his soul.